Game Day
by Dani-Ellie03
Summary: "The snow's not going anywhere and we've got a very long day ahead of us." "Which begs the question," Henry continued, undeterred. "What are we going to do?" "I'm all for taking a nap," Emma grumbled at the same time as Snow suggested dragging out some board games. Emma blinked at her mother. "Board games? Seriously?" (or, a snow day with the Charmings.)
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Game Day  
**Summary: **"The snow's not going anywhere and we've got a very long day ahead of us." "Which begs the question," Henry continued, undeterred. "What are we going to do?" "I'm all for taking a nap," Emma grumbled at the same time as Snow suggested dragging out some board games. Emma blinked at her mother. "Board games? Seriously?"  
**Spoilers:** None, really, but let's just say everything up through 2x11, "The Outsider."  
**Rating/Warning:** K+, for Emma's mouth. No real warnings to speak of, but you might want to keep a toothbrush handy, because this is cotton-candy-fluffy.  
**Disclaimer:** _Once Upon a Time_ and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I just need something to get me through hiatus.  
**Author's Note: **I knew I wouldn't be able to stay away for long! And since we have THREE FREAKING WEEKS till the next new ep (not that I'm bitter or anything), I need some Charming Family fluff to help pass the time. This came from who-knows-where (the things I think about when I'm trying to fall asleep at night, man, I'm telling you), but once it was in my head, it wouldn't go away. Shoutout to starophie, whose enthusiasm for the idea helped me get it going quicker than I anticipated. Since, as I've mentioned before, humor isn't my strong suit, feedback is much appreciated (and something I live for). Finally and most importantly, enjoy!

* * *

Emma Swan was making a list. No, she wasn't going to check it twice; it wasn't that kind of list. This was a Things Fairy Tale Characters Living In the Real World Need to Purchase list. And first on that list was a goddamned snowblower.

That way, the next time a winter storm blew through and deposited six inches of snow on Storybrooke overnight, she wouldn't have to get up before the sun to help her father shovel out everyone's parking spots. David – she could not bring herself to call him Charming – could use normal, twenty-first-century technology to clear the spaces in fifteen minutes like a normal, twenty-first-century person.

It was pure altruism, you see. Buying a snowblower would save her father from turning into Frosty the Snowman every time it snowed. Metaphorically, of course, but she probably shouldn't say stuff like that too loudly around Storybrooke. The fact that she could stay in her nice, warm bed while David went out to use the snowblower was an added bonus.

Not that their two-hour shoveling marathon mattered in the slightest. For one thing, it was still snowing. The forecast called for the snow to end at some point around dinnertime, but shoveling in spurts was easier than shoveling all at once. For another thing, Storybrooke apparently only employed one snowplow. The plow operator was Leroy, and the plow simply attached to the front of his pickup truck.

Emma had expressed her disbelief that a town in _Maine_, of all goddamned places, didn't have a real, industrial snowplow at its disposal. Mary Margaret – er, Snow White mentioned that it had never been an issue before. Emma had again expressed disbelief, with a few more swear words this time, but Snow told her that big snowstorms didn't really happen in a magically unchanging town.

It was at that point that Emma stopped her. She'd handled a lot of crazy truths in recent weeks with something vaguely resembling aplomb, but any talk of the unchanging nature of Storybrooke under the curse made her brain hurt.

She'd told David to wake her at five so they could start shoveling, which turned out to be one of the stupidest ideas she'd ever had. Most of the roads weren't clear yet because the storm had unsurprisingly outpaced their plow crew of one. But still, they shoveled, figuring they were already up and outside. Now Emma was shivering, exhausted, and reasonably sure she had frostbite in her fingers, and her day hadn't even really started yet.

_There better be cocoa waiting for us when we get upstairs_, she thought as she started trudging up the stairs to the apartment with David at her heels.

Emma should have known better than to doubt her mother. The sweet aroma of hot chocolate greeted her as soon as she opened the apartment door. She inhaled deeply, her eyes closing against the scent.

"Off with the wet clothes," Snow said even though Emma had already begun pulling off her soaked gloves and hat. She handed both her husband and daughter a steaming mug before gathering their wet outerwear from the floor. "I cranked the heat, too, so you two should warm up pretty quickly."

"I can think of a way you can warm me up," David whispered to Snow as she passed him on her way to the dryer, his voice low enough that only she could hear him.

Or so he thought. "Ugh!" Emma cried. If her poor, aching hands weren't wrapped so tightly around her mug, she would have pressed them over her ears. "Thanks for that. Now I need to go to find some bleach for my brain."

"Sorry," he cringed, a blush creeping up his cheeks.

Emma just grunted a response as she carried her cocoa over to the sofa. She made herself a little cocoon out of the blankets Snow liked to keep draped over the back of the couch and waited for warmth.

Between the throws, the cocoa, and the fact that Snow had turned the heat up to about eighty, Emma started to warm up within minutes. She leaned her head against the back of the sofa and shut her eyes, listening to the sounds of her parents shuffling around the kitchen to get breakfast started.

At least, that was what she hoped they were doing. Wait ... yeah, she definitely heard a frying pan thunking down on the stove. Whew.

The early morning stillness was shattered a few minutes later when Henry bounded down the stairs, exclaiming over the amount of snow on the ground. "And it's supposed to continue all day!" he added excitedly as he skidded to a stop at the counter. "We obviously can't go anywhere today, so we what are we going to do? Can I go play outside at some point?"

Emma's eyes shot open in the face of her son's exuberance. "Whoa, kid, take a breath. It's only …" she trailed off, searching for the wall clock, " … ugh, seven-thirty. The snow's not going anywhere and we've got a very long day ahead of us."

"Which begs the question," Henry continued, undeterred. "What are we going to do?"

"I'm all for taking a nap," Emma grumbled at the same time as Snow suggested dragging out some board games. Emma blinked at her mother. "Board games? Seriously?"

"What else are we going to do?" Snow asked with a shrug.

They could watch movies or read or, you know, take a nap. Anything but board games. "You just happen to have a collection of board games lying around?" she asked, arching a single eyebrow at her mother. The curse hadn't exactly set Mary Margaret Blanchard up with an arsenal of games and distractions at her disposal.

"I, um, actually went out and bought a few right after we came back from the Enchanted Forest," Snow admitted sheepishly. "And I took some duplicates from my classroom at school."

"You _stole_ board games?" Emma asked in disbelief.

"_Borrowed_," Snow replied. "I borrowed them."

"But you weren't planning on giving them back."

"That's beside the point."

Before Emma could argue any further, Henry exclaimed, "All right! So what are we playing?"

David and Snow grinned at each other while Emma just rolled her eyes with a heavy sigh. A nap still sounded like the better option.

* * *

After a breakfast of pancakes and bacon – the perfect breakfast for a winter morning, according to David – Snow pulled out all the board games she'd purchased and "borrowed." Every game she had, along with a set of dominoes and a deck of cards, now sat in a pile in the center of the living area. Snow sat cross-legged next to the games while Henry, Emma, and David took seats on the couch. The plan, as Snow outlined, was to go through the pile game by game and put each one to a vote, yea or nay.

Emma wrinkled her nose at the selection in front of her. The occasional board game was fine. Fun, even. A whole day of them? Not so much.

"All right, let's get this started," Snow spoke up, commanding everyone's attention. When she picked up game at the top of the pile, Emma almost failed to hold in her groan. "How do we feel about Monopoly?"

"Absolutely not," Emma answered, shaking her head. "I want to still like all of you when we're done with this."

"We'll still like each other," David protested. "It's just a game."

"No one ever likes each other after a game of Monopoly," Emma argued. "There's fighting over Boardwalk and Park Place, there's fighting over the railroads, there's fighting over the utilities, and someone always quits the game in tears." She stopped speaking at that point but only because everyone was looking at her in surprise. "Just trust me. No Monopoly."

"All right, no Monopoly," Snow said with raised eyebrows. She set the box aside, creating a No pile. "How about Sorry?"

Again, it was Emma who protested. "Nope. I want you all to still like me when we're done with this." Her parents frowned at her. She actually found their identical perplexed looks kind of funny. "I'm _vicious_ at Sorry. I used to fleece the new kids at my foster homes by betting them they couldn't beat me at Sorry. I was just this unassuming little blonde kid at first blush, so they all took the bait. I always ended up wiping the floor with them. I had _strategies_."

"There are strategies in Sorry?" Henry asked, his brow furrowing in confusion. "Isn't it really just luck of the draw?"

_Oh, kid_, Emma thought. She felt a pang of guilt when she realized just how much she was going to beat the pants off him. "Put it in the Yes pile, then. I'll show you what I mean."

Snow exchanged a glance with David, who gave her a shrug in return as if to say, _Why not?_ "So Sorry's a tentative yes," Snow said, creating a new pile next to Monopoly. "Any objections to Boggle?"

"Um, not to be all Johnny Rain On Your Parade," Emma spoke up sheepishly, "but I had strategies at Boggle, too."

"_Boggle_ has strategies?" Henry asked incredulously. "I mean, beyond finding as many words as you can in three minutes?"

At least now he looked intrigued, as did her mother and father. Eh, what the hell. She supposed she could give them a little something free for nothing, even the playing field a little bit. "Strategy number one," she said, ticking it off on her index finger, "the S is your friend. Make plurals whenever you can out of whatever you can. Most people will see, say, 'bear' but they won't always see 'bears.' And if they didn't see either, then you've got two words for the price of one. Strategy number two: know your anagrams. If you have 'tea,' nine times out of ten you also have 'eat' and 'ate.' The trick is trying to get the most bang for your letter buck."

All three of them were staring at her in amazement. Suddenly uncomfortable with the attention, she squirmed on the sofa before nudging Henry. "Remember when you asked me how I was so good at Text Twist? This is how."

"All right, Boggle's a definite yes," David spoke up, nodding towards his wife. "I want to see our daughter the wordsmith in action."

Emma heaved a sigh as Boggle joined Sorry in the Yes pile. Snow sent her a comforting look before grabbing the next box in the stack. She snickered when she realized exactly she had in her hand; this must have been one of the games she'd taken from school. "How about Pretty Pretty Princess?"

Her suggestion was met with a loud, horrified, three-voice chorus of, "No!"

"I figured," she laughed, plopping the dress-up game on top of Monopoly. "I just couldn't resist. Clue's up next."

"I like that one," Henry said at same time as Emma insisted that watching the movie would be a better use of their time. The kid's eyes widened in excitement. "There's a movie?"

All of a sudden, Emma remembered just how much innuendo was in that movie. Funny and quotable innuendo but innuendo nonetheless. "Uh, yeah, but it's a movie that's not entirely appropriate for you, so pretend I didn't say anything."

"Aw, man, that's not fair!" Henry cried. "I can't just pretend you didn't say anything!"

"So Clue's a yes?" Snow asked over her grandson's protests. "The game, not the movie?"

"Yes," David answered.

Smiling, Snow set the game in the Yes pile and moved on. "Payday?"

"Eh, it gets boring after a while," Henry said.

Snow looked to Emma and David, neither of whom had ever had the pleasure of playing. They both just shrugged. Making the executive decision, she dropped the game into the No pile. As she grabbed the next game in line, her brow furrowed. "What on earth is Jumanji? I've never even heard of–"

"Oh, sweet mother of God, no!" Emma cried. "Knowing this place, that home version really would come to life. I have absolutely no desire to live out a Robin Williams movie, thank you very much."

Henry laughed, at least. Snow and David just exchanged a bewildered glance. Still, Snow did as Emma suggested and placed Jumanji in the No pile.

They continued voting until they'd whittled the playable pile down to Sorry, Boggle, Clue, Chutes and Ladders, and The Game of Life. Taboo was sitting in a Maybe pile, along with both the deck of cards ("for Concentration!" according to Henry) and the dominoes ("the only way I know how to play with dominoes is to set up topples," from Emma).

After putting away the rejected games – and setting Pretty Pretty Princess aside to bring back to school since she couldn't in good conscience burn it like Emma asked – Snow turned to her family. "All right, looks like we're all set. So which one are we playing first?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Holy friggin' crap, you guys! When I came up with this, I thought I'd get a couple reviews all, "Okay, cute idea" but 22 reviews on one chapter?! Y'all are absolutely awesome. Hope you enjoy the next part!

* * *

For whatever reason, Henry insisted on playing Sorry first. The wicked gleam in his eye told Emma that he had every intention of attempting to dethrone the reigning Queen of Sorry. Which was perfectly fine with Emma; she enjoyed a challenge.

"So," she said to her family as she set up the Sorry board, "we all know how to play, right?"

Henry heaved a sigh, as if he couldn't believe someone might not know how to play Sorry. "Draw cards, move pieces around the board according to the instructions on the card. If you land on a square someone else is occupying, you send their piece back to Start. First person to move all four of their pieces into Home wins."

It came out all in one breath. Emma raised her eyebrows at him while trying – and failing – to hide an amused grin. "That was impressive," she said to Henry before turning her attention to her parents. "Did you two get that?"

Snow, who sort of remembered playing with the kids at school, nodded. The slightly lost look on David's face made Emma wince. This game was clearly not an Enchanted Forest invention so he wouldn't have played as a child, and he didn't have twenty-eight years worth of vague Storybrooke memories involving children to fall back on like Snow did. "It's actually rather self-explanatory," she assured him. "You'll pick it up quickly."

"I'll go last, then," he said, giving his daughter a little smile. "Watching you three go before me should give me an idea."

"Works for me," Emma shrugged before telling Henry to get the ball rolling.

The first section in Emma's patent-pending Sorry Strategy Playbook detailed observing her opponents, watching how they played. Some people used no strategy at all, chalking everything up to luck of the draw. Others kicked the other players off the board willy-nilly, figuring the more frustrating it was for everyone else, the easier it would be for them. Most people played somewhere in between those two extremes, but the point was, Emma knew almost instinctively how to counteract any possible strategy she encountered.

In just a few minutes of play, Emma learned a lot about her family's playing styles. Snow was playing nicely, moving her pieces around the board and actually cringing when she had to kick either Henry or Emma back to Start. Any time a drawn card forced her to do something to one of her opponents, she chose to screw David over. In other words, she was playing like a mom.

David was playing a bit more aggressively, going after Snow out of revenge but also taking out Henry and Emma equally. He took pleasure in kicking their pieces back to Start and even attempted teasing trash talk all of once before Emma laughingly said, "Never say anything like that again."

Henry sat on the opposite end of the spectrum from his grandparents. He was playing like a wild child, gleefully sending his opponents' pieces back to Start at every opportunity.

None of their actions gave them a single edge, though, because Emma knew exactly how to win this particular game.

All she had to do was try her best to remain unobtrusive as she let the game unfold. Her parents' good-natured battle of one-upmanship kept them focused on each other, while Henry's penchant for knocking everyone else off the board made him a favorite target for revenge. To win, Emma simply had to stay out of everyone's way.

This little strategy of hers did not mean completely refraining from gameplay, however. Doing absolutely nothing to anybody would attract just as much attention as doing everything to everybody. A well-timed land on a slide that knocked Snow back to Start or the occasional position swap with David or Henry instead of moving forward eleven spaces went a long way towards protecting and preserving her true strategy.

When she finally drew the three she needed, she grinned to herself. "And that's a wrap," she said as she plunked her final pawn down in Home.

All three of them looked up sharply at her words, identical looks of surprise on their faces. Henry's jaw was actually hanging open, which made Emma bite back a snicker. "That's a great way to catch flies, kid."

Henry snapped his mouth shut but only for a second. "Whoa, wait a sec," he said, waving his hands in front of him. "You just … you won?"

"Read 'em and weep," Emma confirmed, nodding at the board. "Or, you know, look at the board and weep. Whatever." That cliché certainly worked better when playing cards.

"But you weren't even … I mean, I didn't …"

At that point, Emma could no longer hold in her chuckle. The poor kid had absolutely no idea what hit him. "Didn't I tell you that I always win?"

"But I didn't even _see_ you doing it!"

"I imagine that was the point," Snow told him, a gentle smile on her face.

Emma remained noncommittal, giving a tiny shrug in response to her mother's statement, but David regarded her with a proud grin anyway. "Well played, Emma. That was great."

Henry narrowed his eyes in his mother's direction. "I want to play again, and this time _I'm_ going to win."

"Henry …" Snow chided.

Behind the challenge in her son's eyes was playfulness, however, and Emma knew in an instant that he wasn't really as upset as he sounded. "No, it's okay," she said, giving her mother a reassuring smile before turning a challenging expression on her son. "The kid wants a rematch, so let's give him a rematch."

She shuffled the cards while everyone else moved their pawns back into starting position. From the fire in her son's eyes, she could tell that Henry was going to be charging after her with everything his little eleven-year-old self was worth.

Which meant Emma needed to up her game. Henry wouldn't allow her to quietly go around the board four times this time. Since the best defense was a good offense, she needed to pull out all the stops. It appeared as if her family was about to learn exactly how she became the Queen of Sorry.

She almost felt guilty. The fact that she had given them fair warning before they even started tempered that guilt a bit, though.

"You guys ready for this?" she asked as she placed the cards down on the board.

"I should be asking _you_ that question," Henry teased, causing Snow and David to chuckle.

Emma raised her eyebrows and gave Henry an innocent little smile while thinking, _Oh, kid, you ain't seen nothin' yet._

From the second Emma moved her first pawn out of Start, she played the most brutal game of Sorry any of them had ever seen. Father, mother, and son all got kicked off the board without impunity. She engineered moves that knocked pawns out of her way, she split sevens, she swapped positions, and she felt an almost perverse sense of pleasure every time she drew the Sorry card.

None of them stood a chance. She ended up with two of her pawns in Home before any of them even had one. "I see what you meant when you said you were vicious," Snow said, amusement in her voice, when Emma split a seven, moving one pawn two spaces forward and the other forward five to land on a slide that sent two of Henry's pawns back to Start.

"I tried to tell you," Emma shrugged as she watched Snow and David take their turns. "I would bet the new kids either money or ice cream sundaes depending on my mood that day. The veterans would just shut up and let me fleece the new kids because it amused the crap out of them. I lost count of how many sundaes I was treated to and how much money I won. The only thing they saw when they looked at me was a little girl with blonde curls. They were expecting sweet and innocent, and they got … me."

"That's my girl," David murmured. Emma froze and shot her head up, her hand hovering over the draw pile. Her father's eyes widened, and she immediately understood that he hadn't meant to say that loud enough for her to hear. He _really_ needed to work on his under-the-breath voice. "I just meant that …" he started, then sighed and tried again. "I mean, it's–"

"It's okay," she said, giving him a tiny smile to set him at ease.

When he smiled back, Emma's heart skipped a beat at the affection. It was still so weird to her. These were her _parents_, the people she'd searched for all her life. The people she had alternately loved and hated growing up. She'd finally found them. There was still that awkwardness, that sense of not really knowing them, that sense of them not really knowing her. And yet – though she would never admit it to them and it was hard to even admit it to herself – there was also that sense of being unable to imagine living without them now.

It was at the same time amazing and terrifying, which was why she tried not to think about it too much. She shook her head in an attempt to bring herself back to the matter at hand. After all, she had a game to win.

This time, no one was shocked when she deposited her final pawn into Home. She shifted her gaze to her son, sweet victory mixing with nervous anticipation as she awaited his reaction. Had she maybe gone a little overboard?

"You totally creamed us," Henry said softly, his eyebrows raised. "That? Was _awesome_! You've _got_ to teach me how to do that."

Emma laughed. Full-on burst out laughing. Everyone was surprised … including Emma. "I'm not sure you're ready, young grasshopper," she teased when she finally caught her breath, "but perhaps someday."

From the identical bewildered expressions on her parents' faces, it was clear they didn't get the joke. Henry laughed, though, so at least it wasn't a complete waste. "Can we finish out the game?" Henry asked his grandparents. "You know, see who comes in second and third?"

"If you want to," Snow answered, her gaze shifting to Emma to make sure she didn't mind sitting out while they played.

Emma didn't mind at all. She pushed herself away from the game a little bit as her family continued to play, leaning her back against the sofa and wrapping her arms around her legs. She noted with an odd sense of pride that Henry had already picked up a couple of her tricks.

Apparently, so had David. He drew an eleven and passed up the chance to move one of his pawns into the safety zone to swap another of his pieces in play with Snow's simply because it set her further back. "That was an Emma move!" she cried in protest.

Emma dropped her head and bit her lower lip but she could not stop the smile from spreading across her face. It took her a moment to identify the new feeling now gripping her heart. It was a feeling she was not used to at all but one she was coming to learn that, if she allowed herself, she could actually enjoy.

Contentment. She was feeling contentment, and she liked it. Would wonders never cease.

She lifted her head and refocused her attention on the game. It was Henry's turn, and as he reached for one of his pawns in play, she caught something he could do with the other. Quickly, she leaned over and whispered, "Move the other one. You'll knock David back to Start, and since it's his only piece out on the board, it'll delay him a lot."

Henry grinned and did as she instructed. "Hey!" David protested when Henry kicked his piece off the board. Emma snickered, causing David to look at her with mock sternness. "No fair giving hints."

"Oh, I'm not supposed to do that?" Emma asked innocently as she gave a nonchalant shrug. "Sorry!"


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:** To anon who asked me if Emma's Sorry strategies were legit: yes and no. I'm quite vicious at Sorry myself (protip: if splitting a seven will knock someone's piece off the board, by all means, take the opportunity), but there is too much luck of the draw involved and too much accounting for the actions of the other players for me to have found a strategy that will _always_ win. :) Also, I'm completely blown away by y'all's response to this story. Hope you like this next part!

* * *

"'Thence?'" Emma cried, actually throwing her hands up in exasperation. "Who the hell still says 'thence?'"

"It's a word," Snow insisted, her voice calm in the face of her daughter's rising annoyance.

"A word nobody says anymore," Emma reiterated. "I didn't realize we were including ye olde Shakespeare's English in this game. Oh, and by the way, before any of you get any ideas, know this right now: if you try using olde with an E? I will refuse to count it."

"Why?" Henry asked. Not that he really cared. He simply found Emma's rants on the changing nature of the English language entertaining.

"Because three-letter words and four-letter words are counted the same. O-L-D and O-L-D-E will each get you one point. There's no reason to use O-L-D-E except to be pretentious."

"Or to try to gain an extra point over someone who thinks using O-L-D-E is pretentious and would never write it down," Snow pointed out, winking at her husband.

"Besides," David added, his eyes sparkling in amusement, "we counted 'ozone' for you in the last game."

"That's because 'ozone' is a word! An actual, current, real-world word! It's _science_."

Henry watched the back and forth, his eyes darting from mother to grandmother to grandfather, and tried not to laugh. He had no real idea why Emma was complaining, to be perfectly honest. She had this game in the bag. Who knew so many words could be made using the letters in "star?" Henry had found all of one word with those four letters: "star." Emma had written down about a gazillion, and that wasn't even including everything else she'd found with the other twelve letters in the grid.

"'Thence' is a real-world word, too," Snow said through a smirk at her daughter. "An antiquated word, to be sure, but a word nonetheless. It's _history_."

Emma opened her mouth, presumably to argue, but then shut it. Henry blinked. No … she couldn't be speechless, could she? He didn't think he'd ever seen her speechless before. Really, truly, shot-down, no-possible-hope-for-argument speechless. For some reason, he found that _really_ funny.

"Not to mention, you wrote down 'hence,'" Snow added even though she had clearly already won the playful dispute. "Not very many people say that in everyday conversation anymore, either, Emma. You can't have it both ways."

"All right!" Emma cried, throwing down her pen in surrender. "You can have 'thence!' God."

"Actually, she can't have 'thence,'" David spoke up, half-sheepishly and half-amused, "because I found it, too."

Emma groaned and placed her head in her hands. No longer able to restrain himself, Henry burst out laughing.

If he had known Boggle was going to be this much fun, he might have suggested playing it first instead of Sorry. Emma was quite clearly good with words but she had neglected to take into account her parents' fairy-tale vernacular. Which meant, as she was discovering to her immense frustration, they had a tendency to find words that had long since dropped out of common use.

Words like "thence." "What does 'thence' even mean?" Henry asked. The question earned him a smile from his grandmother and an annoyed glare from his mother.

"It means 'from there,'" Snow answered him. He didn't know if she did it on purpose, but her voice took on an instructional tone, much like the way she used to speak when she was Mary Margaret and standing in front of her class. "So instead of saying, 'I went to the store and then I went to the movies,' you would say, 'I went to the store and thence to the movies.'"

"Actually, you wouldn't," Emma teasingly argued. "Nobody who is alive at a point in time where they could go to the movies has ever heard of 'thence.'"

"Oh, hush," Snow said, giving a dismissive wave of her hand. "I was just using it as an example."

"Did you just shush me?!"

"Children!" David's admonition instantly stopped the mother-daughter bickering. "I'd like to make it through the rest of Snow's list while we're all still young, please."

Both Snow and Emma looked down at their lists, suitably chastened. As Emma reached for the pen she'd thrown aside, David caught Henry's eye and winked. Henry slapped a hand over his mouth to muffle his giggle. Sure, it may have been a little mean of David to let Snow and Emma think he was actually annoyed with their arguing, but at least it got them to move the game along a bit.

Just as Henry suspected, after they went through the rest of Snow's list and what remained of David's, Emma was declared the winner. It was clearly a much tighter race than she was used to, but her penchant for anagrams gave her a bit of an edge.

"Okay, kid," Emma said, setting her pen down and stretching her legs out in front of her, "do the honors."

This right here was always Henry's favorite part of Boggle, even on the rare occasions he would play with his mom long before Emma came to town. He grinned as he set the lid on the tray, turned it upside down, and shook it a lot harder than required. He turned it upright, tapping the side until all the cubes lay flat in the grid. After giving the letters a quick once-over to make sure they were varied enough and in the proper arrangement for a decent game, he removed the lid. "On your mark," he said, grabbing the sand timer in his hand. "Get set ..."

He flipped the timer over with one hand while taking up his pen in the other. "Go!"

Henry played with fervor even though he knew he had no shot of winning. His mother and grandparents had far bigger vocabularies than he did. On the other hand, he was a little bit better at finding smaller words than the adults. He didn't know why that was; maybe they focused so much attention on finding big words that they missed the smaller ones. No matter the reason, at the end of every game, he would have a few points, but never enough to win. Because, as Emma said before they played their first round, three-letter words don't make the buttercups shine.

Still, he liked the challenge. The looks on the adults' faces when he pointed out all the little words they'd missed were pretty funny, too.

It was even better when they missed a three-letter word that was part of a longer word they did find. After three minutes of everyone furiously scribbling down words, the time came to compare notes. Henry listed 'din,' which nobody else wrote down. "Ugh!" Emma muttered. "And I had 'dine' and 'diner,' too! That was lame."

In the end, he was left with four three-letter words, two four-letter words, and, to his complete and utter shock, one five-letter word. He was the only one who thought to add a D onto "line." Now it was time for the really fun part: watching the adults go through their lists.

David burst Emma's bubble a little bit by taking "slide" from her but she was pleased that no one else had written down "slider." Pleased as punch, actually, until Snow challenged, "Use it in a sentence."

"I made cheeseburger sliders for dinner," Emma easily retorted.

Of course she was thinking of the sandwich. Emma's mind very rarely strayed too far from her next meal. "And here I was thinking you meant 'one who slides,'" David teased.

"Or a baseball pitch," Henry said.

"A sliding glass door is sometimes called a slider," Emma added. "And there was a TV show called _Sliders_, but something tells me none of you would have had any idea what I was talking about if I mentioned it before."

"Okay, okay," Snow said, raising her hands in surrender. "Uncle. That's sufficient evidence that it's a real word."

When it was Snow's turn, Emma turned the tables on her after she listed "idler." "Use that one in a sentence."

"The student who refuses to take notes is idler than the one who does," Snow replied just as easily as Emma had. "It's also commonly used as a noun. I could make up another sentence if you would like me to."

Emma narrowed her eyes. She would never have used "idler" in everyday conversation, but then again, without occasionally having to talk about letting a car engine run, she probably would never use "idle," either. "No, that's okay."

Henry gave a slight shake of his head, but he was grinning. Something told him Emma hadn't expected her mother to give her such a run for her money when they first agreed to play. She just barely edged Snow out this time.

"One more game?" David asked.

"Yeah, sure," Emma shrugged. "Why not?"

Henry could tell that Emma was getting tired, though whether she was tiring of Boggle or just getting tired in general, he had no idea. She kept running a hand over her face every few minutes, but she seemed determined to stick it out at least long enough to get through one more round.

With another wide grin, Henry slapped the lid on the tray and once again shook the cubes for all he was worth. A quick glance proved the letters were good, so he set the tray back down and turned the timer over.

It wasn't until he really started playing that he realized he'd done a fantastic job shuffling. This game was _good_, with Es and As and Rs and everyone's favorite, the S. He even managed to get some anagrams this time! "Era" and "eras" joined "are," "ear," and "ears" on his sheet of paper.

Those three minutes were three of the fastest minutes Henry had ever experienced. He'd written so much that his hand actually hurt! When it came time to read off their words, Emma was really impressed with his list. "Awesome job, kid. You used the S _and_ you made anagrams."

"Thanks!" he beamed.

His list wasn't enough to beat Emma, of course, but it did put a nice, large dent in her list. From the sparkle in her eyes when she got to her last word, though, Henry knew she had something up her sleeve. "And my last word … 'parmesan.'"

"What?!" David and Snow asked in unison.

"Um, 'parmesan?'" Emma repeated, though now she sounded a little unsure of herself. "Like the cheese. Or the chicken dish … you know, chicken parmesan?"

"Where in the hell did you find 'parmesan?'" That was from David.

Emma tapped the letter cubes with the cap of her pen. P-A-R-M-E-S-A-N.

Both parents blinked at her with a mixture of shock and pride. Snow recovered her voice first. "I thought finding 'ozone' in Boggle was impressive, but 'parmesan?' It's a good thing this was the last game, because there is no topping that."

"I don't know," Emma muttered, squirming uncomfortably under their gaze, "'thence' came pretty close."

There was a beat of silence before David said, "Just wait until we're finding 'whither' and 'heretofore' and words like that."

"Oh my God!" Emma cried, chuckling in relief at having the attention taken off of her. "First of all, if you ever find 'heretofore,' I will gladly hand over my Boggle crown because prior to 'parmesan,' the best word I'd ever found was 'wedding.' And second of all, if you people really do start talking like Shakespeare, I might in fact have to strangle you."

"Forsooth! We are henceforth warned, verily," David teased, winking at Snow.

Henry and Snow burst out laughing. Emma crumpled up her word list and threw it at him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** This chapter kind of ran away from me and took a turn I had not intended whatsoever. Oops?

* * *

Who knew that by tossing one wadded-up piece of paper at her father, Emma would inadvertently set off World War III? David crumpled up his own word list and threw it at his daughter in retaliation, causing Emma to whip it right back at him. Not one to sit on the sidelines when there was fun to be had, Henry crumpled up his sheet of paper and threw it in Emma's direction only to have it bounce off his grandmother's forehead instead.

"We need to work on your aim, kid," Emma said, swallowing the snicker that threatened to escape at her mother's shocked expression.

"Yes," Snow agreed as she wadded up her own list. "Aim is extremely important." She pulled her hand back to throw the paper ball at Henry but just before it left her hand, she changed direction, tossing it at Emma instead.

"Hey!" Emma cried. She managed to deflect the ball with her hand so that it bounced off her palm instead of her head. "What was that for?"

"For starting the war in the first place," Snow replied with a teasing grin.

Before Emma had a chance to react, all three of them ganged up on her, pelting her with wadded paper ball upon wadded paper ball. "White flag, white flag!" Emma laughingly cried, her hands covering her face to protect it from her family's assault. "Cease fire!"

"What do you say, troops?" Snow asked, turning a conspiratorial grin on her husband and grandson. "Shall we offer the enemy amnesty?"

The guys pretended to think it over before nodding at her. Snow set her "weapon" down and smiled at her daughter. "We accept your surrender."

"You people are so freaking weird," Emma muttered. From the way she ducked her head, though, Snow could tell she was trying to hide a smile. To further hide her amusement, she busied herself with picking up the scattered Boggle cubes, which had gotten kicked from the tray at some point during their paper war.

Henry helped Emma clean up the mess. After tracking down the sand timer, which had ended up under the sofa, and handing it to his mother, he said, "I'm getting hungry."

A glance up at the clock told Snow that it was indeed coming up on lunchtime. On a day when the entire family was together like this, she would typically suggest going out for lunch. However, the thick white flakes still falling from the sky denied her that option today.

After a brief moment of thought, she remembered she had a batch of homemade tomato soup in the freezer. "How about some tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, hmm?"

"Do you really have to ask me that question?" Emma said by way of an affirmation.

"No, but it was a question for the room, Emma."

"Works for me," Henry shrugged. Something told Snow that as long as it was food, Henry didn't care what he ate.

"Me, too," David whispered into her ear before pressing a soft kiss to her temple.

Henry let out a quiet, "Aww."

At the other end of the spectrum was Emma, who wrinkled her nose and jokingly covered Henry's eyes with her hand. "Ew. There are children present, you know."

The fact that Emma had reacted more childishly than the actual child made Snow giggle. As Henry pried his mother's hand from his eyes, Snow told them both to make themselves comfortable while she and David got the soup defrosting.

"You don't have to tell me twice," Emma said as she plopped down on the sofa. Henry settled down on the floor with his back to the couch. "We'll just be over here, watching the news tell us it's snowing, as if we couldn't figure that out for ourselves."

"Or not," came Henry's disappointed voice a moment later. "The cable's out."

"I have a few DVDs upstairs," Emma said, gently nudging his shoulder with her big toe. "Go pick something out." He pushed himself to his feet and darted for the stairs with such a mischievous grin that she felt the need to call after him, "Something that isn't _Clue_!"

"Since when do you have a DVD collection?" Snow asked as she set the container of soup in a pot of water on the stove.

"Since you have a collection of board games," Emma teasingly shot back. "And it's not a _collection_, really. I only have like, five or six of them. That's not enough to be a collection, is it?"

Snow never got a chance to answer because Henry came back downstairs then, movie in hand. He ran over to the couch and held up the case for Emma's approval. "Seriously?" she asked. "You want to watch _Pete's Dragon_?" After a brief pause, she wrinkled her brow and snatched the DVD from her son's hand. "Wait a minute. Why the hell do I have _Pete's Dragon_?"

"You don't," Henry replied, grinning in amusement. "It's mine. I packed it when my mom said I could stay with Gramps when you and Gramma were in the Enchanted Forest."

Emma heaved a sigh but gave her son permission to put the movie in anyway. She curled up on her side, resting her head on the throw pillow and tucking her hands underneath it, while Henry reclaimed his spot on the floor below Emma. For a few minutes, the only sounds Snow could hear in the apartment were the faint murmurs from the TV and Henry's little voice humming along with the songs in the movie.

David broke the silence by wondering aloud if he and Emma should go out and shovel some more after they got a bit of food into their systems. "You two were nearly frostbitten when you came in this morning, Charming," Snow reminded him. "Not to mention that the roads still aren't clear. There's no sense in shoveling the cars out until we can actually go somewhere."

"I completely agree with that assessment," Emma mumbled from the couch.

"See? You're outnumbered," Snow told him.

"I guess so," he replied with a smile.

Again, a comfortable silence settled over the apartment. Once the soup was defrosted, Snow transferred it from the container to a saucepan and put it over low heat. Then she got to work on the sandwiches. "Henry, do you want double cheese?"

"Yes, please," the boy replied, pausing mid-hum to answer his grandmother.

"Emma, what about you?"

No answer.

With a confused frown, Snow looked up from her task and across the room to the sofa. Her frown instantly turned into a smile when the reason Emma didn't answer her became clear: at some point between protesting going out to shovel and now, she had fallen fast asleep.

The pause in conversation tore Henry's attention from the movie. He followed his grandmother's gaze to his mother and grinned. "Can I put shaving cream in her hand and tickle her nose?"

"No," Snow replied, choking back a laugh. "Leave her alone."

She returned her attention to the sandwiches. She asked David if he could get her the butter from the other end of the counter but he didn't respond. When she looked up, she noted with surprise that there was a rather pensive look on his face. It was only after following his darting gaze from Emma to the blankets draped over the top of the sofa and back again that she understood. "Go ahead, Charming," she whispered to him. "You won't wake her."

He faced her, a nervous little smile on his lips. She raised herself up on her toes, giving him an encouraging kiss before nudging him forward. "I watched over her enough in the Enchanted Forest to know. She's sound asleep."

An unidentifiable emotion filled her heart as she watched her husband approach the sofa and take one of the blankets in his hands. He tentatively spread the blanket over his daughter, as if afraid the slight weight of the fabric would rouse her.

Snow understood his hesitation; Emma was not likely to appreciate his actions if she woke. When he folded the blanket around her shoulders, she didn't even flinch. The obvious depth of her slumber must have given him courage because he very lightly ran his hand over her hair and tucked an unruly lock behind her ear. "Sleep well, Emma," he whispered.

Emma scrunched her nose in her sleep, stretching her legs out under the blanket. David inhaled sharply and held the breath only to let it out in both sweet relief and touched amusement when she grabbed the edge of the blanket and pulled it tighter around her shoulders.

Watching her husband tuck in their baby girl for the first time struck Snow as remarkably bittersweet. As heartwarming as it was, it only served to remind her all of the nights and all the years the curse stole from them, all the opportunities for tucking in their daughter that they had missed.

She crossed the room, coming to a stop at her husband's side. She wrapped an arm around him from behind and rested her cheek against his shoulder. "Is it weird that I could just stand here for the rest of the afternoon and watch her sleep?" he asked her softly.

"Not at all," she assured him. "I watched her all the time in the Forest. She caught me once, woke up from a dream and told me to stop because it was creepy before turning over and going back to sleep."

She could hear the smile in his voice when he asked, "And did you stop?"

"Of course not," she grinned. "I just made sure she didn't catch me again."

They stood in silence for a long beat before Henry spoke up almost hesitantly, "Um, not to break up a cute moment or anything, but I'm _really_ getting hungry."

Oh, right. Snow had been making lunch, and far be it for her to come between a hungry eleven-year-old boy and his food. "My apologies, Sir Henry," she said with a teasing wink. "One double grilled cheese sandwich, coming right up."

Henry beamed and pushed himself up from the floor, following his grandparents to the kitchen. "So what game are we playing next?"

Snow darted her gaze to Emma before refocusing her attention on her grandson. She didn't want to get too involved in a board game in case Emma woke up from her nap relatively quickly but she couldn't make everyone wait on her, either. "We could play War," she suggested as she set the sandwiches on the griddle. "Or Concentration, perhaps."

"I like War," Henry said.

"I do, too," David agreed.

"War it is, then," she grinned.

She finished the sandwiches and ladled out bowls of soup for herself, David, and Henry. She figured she could leave the soup on the stove so it wouldn't take too long to reheat when she made a sandwich for Emma later. They ate companionably, chatting about this and that. When they were finished, Snow cleared the table and set the dirty dishes in the sink.

Uncharacteristically, she let the dishes sit. There would be time for doing the dishes later. Right now, she had a game of War to deal.

It turned out that playing War with Henry was akin to playing Sorry with Emma. At least this particular game was. Considering there was no strategy involved whatsoever, Snow had no idea how the boy managed to gain such an edge. He was dealt two aces and won a third in a war with her within the first five minutes of the game.

"Wow," she muttered when Henry won a double war with David that gave him the fourth ace. "Henry, have you ever lost a game of War?"

"Once or twice," he said with a nonchalant shrug. Snow exchanged an amused glance with David over their grandson's head.

Since he had all four aces, he ended up with all of Snow's cards not long after that. Smiling at Henry's glee over kicking her out of the match, she leaned her back against the sofa to watch the rest of the game. A few minutes later, she felt fingers combing through her hair. She turned her head and looked up to find Emma half-awake, staring at the flickering images on the TV through heavy-lidded eyes. "Well, good afternoon, sleepyhead."

Emma's eyes widened at the sound of her mother's voice. She abruptly withdrew her hand, and Snow suddenly felt as if she'd somehow said the wrong thing. "Sorry. I thought you were Henry."

Considering Henry had been sitting in the same spot when Emma fell asleep, it was an understandable mistake. Before Snow had a chance to assure her it was okay, however, Emma sat up and changed the subject. "You know, they showed us this movie a few times when I was in school. I never did like it very much."

Snow had almost forgotten that Henry had left _Pete's Dragon_ playing. She picked herself up from the floor and settled down on the sofa next to her daughter. She regarded the TV briefly before turning her gaze on Emma. "Why not?"

"A little boy with no parents, no friends, the family he lives with treats him horribly, and all he wants is a place to belong? It kind of hit a little close to home."

Snow felt her stomach lurch at her daughter's words. She wished so hard she could take that pain from Emma, make it so she'd never had to live through any of it.

Before Snow had time to even formulate another thought, Emma seemed to realize the direction she'd just taken the conversation. So, in typical Emma fashion, she added, "Plus, that song they sing when they're painting the lighthouse is a goddamned earworm. It would be stuck in my head for days afterward."

Snow could have kicked herself for letting the moment slip away. It was how Emma operated, of course, believing it was easier to bury the emotion than to let it surface. But someday … someday Emma would open up long enough for Snow to help her daughter put some antibiotic ointment on those wounds so they could begin to heal instead of constantly burying them under layers of gauze.

The moment gone for good now, Snow settled for giving Emma a gentle smile.

"That's my favorite song in the whole entire movie!" Henry exclaimed, looking away from the game for a split second to meet his mother's eyes. It was clear neither he nor David had heard the beginning of the conversation.

"Why does that not surprise me?" Emma asked with a little smile.

When Henry finally captured his grandfather's last card, he raised his hands over his head in victory. "Yes! I beat Gramma and Gramps at War!"

"The kid's a shark," David admitted, winking over Henry's head at his wife and daughter.

"That doesn't surprise me, either," Emma smirked. "If there's one thing that I've learned today, it's that it's in his genes."


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** I felt the need to throw in some daddy/daughter time. Because there hasn't been enough of it for my liking. :) Hope you like!

* * *

It took a few minutes for Emma to wake up enough to realize that she was _starving_. That was what she got for napping through lunch, she supposed. She started to stand, intent on heading to the kitchen to put something together, but Snow rested a hand on her knee, stopping her. "Did you want double cheese in your sandwich?"

"Yes, please," Emma replied, a tiny, grateful smile on her lips.

Snow patted her knee before standing up and walking over to the stove. Not content to let her mother make her a sandwich by herself, Emma pushed herself to her feet and crossed the room. She drew to a stop at the counter and leaned forward with her forearms on the tile. She was suddenly reminded of all the times she stood in this exact same spot and watched Mary Margaret cook dinner for the two of them.

Before she could get too lost in thought, Henry sidled up next to her. "Just so you know, if you fall asleep again, I'm putting shaving cream in your hand and then tickling your nose."

She didn't say a word in response to her son's warning, instead choosing to arch a single eyebrow at him.

"I wanted to do it earlier, but Gramma wouldn't let me," he added, as if that made it better.

Emma looked at her mother, who was biting her lower lip to keep from smiling since that would only encourage his mischief. "Thank you."

"You're very welcome," Snow replied as she set Emma's sandwich on the griddle.

Then Emma turned back to address her son. "I don't think I'm going to fall asleep again, but on the off chance that I do and you decide to go ahead with your plan of putting shaving cream in my hand, be prepared to wake up tomorrow morning with a Sharpie mustache. A _pink_ Sharpie mustache."

"You'd give your own son a Sharpie mustache?" David asked with mock incredulity.

"I'm more shocked by the fact that she has a pink Sharpie," Snow broke in.

"_I_ don't have a pink Sharpie, personally. I took it from the supply cabinet at the station for some reason I can't remember now, and I keep forgetting to bring it back," Emma explained, answering her mother's point first. To her father, she said, "And no, ordinarily I would not give my son a Sharpie mustache, but if the kid gives me shaving cream face, all bets are off."

Mother and son met each other's eyes with identical mischievous grins, making David snicker. Snow handed Emma her plate of grilled cheese and bowl of soup over the counter, and Emma took her meal to the table. David sat down across from his daughter, who was biting into her sandwich as if she'd never eaten before. He bit back a smile and decided now was as good a time as any to pose a question to the room. "After Emma finishes lunch, what game are we playing?"

"Clue?" Henry asked, his tone so hopeful that he might as well have clasped his hands underneath his chin.

"Only if I get to be Miss Scarlet," Emma replied around a mouthful of grilled cheese.

Since the family's activities were in a natural lull, Snow had decided to do the dishes. She turned the water off as she addressed her daughter. "How come you want to be Miss Scarlet?"

Emma shrugged. "She was my favorite character in the movie."

"When are we going to watch the movie?" Henry asked.

"In a couple of years when it'll be more appropriate for you."

"Aw, man," he muttered. He had clearly been hoping that Emma had forgotten why she'd decided he couldn't watch it. After letting out a quiet sigh, he asked, "Can I be Colonel Mustard?"

David and Snow exchanged an amused glance. Who knew picking Clue characters would generate this much discussion? "And why do you want to be Colonel Mustard, Henry?" Snow asked.

"I like how 'colonel' is not pronounced at all like it's spelled."

The effort of trying to swallow a laugh almost made Emma choke on her sandwich. "Don't make me laugh while I'm eating, kid," she said in between coughs.

"Sorry," Henry said sheepishly. "I'll go set Clue up, if that's okay."

"Yes, it's okay," Snow told him while giving her daughter a mildly concerned look. Since Emma could talk, Snow knew she wasn't choking, but that didn't make her daughter's coughs easier to hear.

Emma stopped coughing as Henry ran off to the living area to set up the game. "No peeking at the cards!" she called after him.

"I won't!"

She narrowed her eyes. "We should shuffle and re-deal the cards before we play," she murmured after a moment of thought. "I can hear it in his voice; he's going to peek."

"You know," came Henry's cheeky little voice from the living area, "you're all kind of already cheating at this game. You guys investigate things for a living."

"That may be true, but it still doesn't mean you can peek at the cards," Emma told him with an indulgent roll of her eyes. "Nice try, though."

"Aw, man!" he muttered again.

"I think I'll go sit on the couch and pretend to read over the rules of the game," Snow whispered as she dried her hands on a dish rag, winking at her husband and daughter. "He'll be less tempted to peek if I'm in the room."

David and Emma were left at the table to their own devices. Considering that Emma was eating, David supposed it fell to him to try to make conversation. "Thanks for doing this, Emma," he said softly after a moment.

"Doing what?" Emma asked, her brow wrinkling in confusion.

"Playing the games with us. When Snow first suggested it, I could tell it wasn't your idea of fun, but you're doing it anyway without complaint." He paused, remembering the lighthearted bickering during Boggle, and amended his statement. "Well, with minimal complaints."

She gave a little smile at his concession before sighing. "It's not that board games aren't my idea of fun. I am having fun. More fun than I expected, actually. It's just … sitting around and playing games? I'm not used to it. I don't know how to _do_ all this … togetherness stuff."

David wasn't quite sure he'd heard her correctly. She'd just opened a door, whether she'd meant to or not, and she hadn't immediately shut it. This was his chance, his opportunity to try to connect her with on a deeper level, a level on which he desperately wanted to connect.

The instant Snow woke him from the sleeping curse, he'd been able to tell that the time she and Emma had spent trapped in the Enchanted Forest had done them a world of good. They'd returned with their bond strengthened, their connection restored. Add in the weeks and months Snow had had with Emma when she was Mary Margaret and, well, David had to admit to being the tiniest bit jealous of his wife. It pained him that she knew their daughter so much better than he did.

This right here was his first chance to be a dad, and it was imperative that he handle it correctly. So how to start? _Slow and steady_, he told himself. _Slow and steady, and follow her lead._

Taking a deep breath, he said, "For someone who's not used to it, you're handling it quite well."

She gave a halfhearted shrug as she dragged her spoon through the soup.

All right, it appeared as if she wasn't going to contribute to the conversation. Still, she hadn't closed the door, which he took as a good sign. "You know, I would give anything to have been able to do this with you when you were Henry's age."

She shot her head up, her surprise evident, but she still didn't say a word, still didn't shut him down.

"I see you with Henry, and all it does is remind me of what I've missed with you. I missed teaching you how to play these games. I missed teaching you how to ride a bike and how to drive a car and the father-daughter dances at school. I missed all the other things fathers in this world are supposed to do with their daughters." The gentle smile on his face had grown bittersweet. "And in our world? I would have had you down at the stables the day you took your first steps. We would have had picnics on nice days and scavenger hunts in the castle on rainy days."

Her eyes had begun to shine with unshed tears. She still hadn't spoken but he wasn't sure whether it was because she didn't want to stop him or because she couldn't speak for fear of losing control of her emotions. Since he didn't know if he'd ever get another chance to say these things, he kept talking. "That was the life I wanted for you, Emma. That was the life you should have had. I am more sorry than you can ever know that the curse stole it from you."

For a long moment, she just stared at him with an inscrutable look on her face. David searched her eyes for any indication of what she was thinking, but she gave away nothing. _Uh oh_, he thought, his breath catching in his throat. Had he crossed some invisible line, pushed her too far?

Then, to his complete and total surprise, she murmured, "You're the first person to apologize to me."

He blinked at her, once again unsure he'd heard her correctly. "What?"

"This is the first time I've had one of these conversations without someone trying to justify everything." Emma fidgeted uncomfortably in the chair and tore her gaze from his, staring into her bowl instead. "I mean, rationally, I know it's not your fault, and I know that you lost just as much as I did. No matter whose fault it was, though, hearing someone acknowledge that the situation really freaking _sucked_ … it was nice. Thank you."

Looking back on it, he wouldn't even know what possessed him to do it, but he reached across the table and covered her hand with his own. She started at the contact and raised her eyes to meet his. After a moment, she returned the little smile on his face. "I'm sorry, too, you know," she said, her voice soft. "I wish you'd had those twenty-eight years with me just as much as I wish I'd had them with you."

Suddenly David knew exactly what Emma had meant, because she was the first person to apologize to him. It didn't matter than she'd done nothing to apologize for; as she'd said, it was nice hearing someone acknowledge the heartache. A lump formed in his throat, and all he could do was smile back in understanding at his baby girl.

They sat in silence as she finished her sandwich and carried her dishes to the sink. As the two of them headed the few steps towards the living area, David decided to take a leap of faith. Tentatively, he reached around Emma's back and rested his hand on her shoulder. To his complete shock, she didn't duck out of his grip or even tense at his touch.

Snow looked up from "reading" the rules when David and Emma stepped up to where Henry had set up Clue. Her eyes widened when she realized her husband essentially had his arm around his daughter's shoulders and that she was allowing it. Thankfully, she didn't say a word about it, just gave them both a smile of greeting. "Thanks for lunch," Emma said to Snow, finally pulling out of David's grip when she sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the game.

"You're welcome." Once Emma focused her attention on shuffling the cards, Snow raised her eyebrows at David, silently asking what miracle had happened while Emma was eating.

David winked and mouthed, _Later_.

"I've decided who you should be, Gramma," Henry spoke up, commanding everyone's attention. He'd already placed his and Emma's pieces on the board and had been examining the other four pieces intently.

"Oh? Who should I be?"

"Mrs. White, of course," he grinned, plucking the white piece from his lineup and setting it on the board.

"Oh, wonderful," Emma said with a roll of her eyes. "Puns. He's choosing characters by puns now."

"Puns are funny," Henry said somewhat defensively.

"Puns are funny the way dad jokes are funny," Emma allowed. "They're not comedy-club funny."

Henry playfully stuck his tongue out at her before changing the subject. "And you should be, Mr. Green, Gramps. Because it's either green or purple–"

"Plum," Emma corrected, winking at her son.

"It's still purple."

"Yeah, but if he's purple, he gets to be a professor."

"So?"

"A postgraduate degree is nothing to sneeze at, kid."

"Do I get a say in this?" David asked, mostly to stop the tedious if amusing bickering between mother and son.

"Maybe," Emma replied, a teasing smile on her face. "Depends on which one of us you're agreeing with."

"I think I want to play as Mr. Green."

Henry beamed while Emma frowned and narrowed her eyes. "How come?"

He sat down on the floor and pointed at the board. "If I'm Mr. Green, I start out by the Conservatory."

Emma's frown deepened. She stared at the board, trying to figure out a strategic reason for wanting to start by the Conservatory. After a moment, she gave up. "Yeah, so?"

A teasing grin formed on his lips. "I like the word 'conservatory.'"

Henry burst out laughing. Emma exchanged a glance with her mother, who gave a shrug and a brief, indulgent roll of her eyes. "Boys. You're both hopeless," Emma muttered while trying to hide a smile.


	6. Chapter 6

Henry finally had all the information he needed. He knew the who, what, and where, so he plucked his grandfather's playing piece from somewhere in the vicinity of the Kitchen and set it down in the Hall. Then he snatched the miniature revolver from the Billiard Room and set it next to the green pawn. "It was Mr. Green in the Hall with the Revolver," he said, a satisfied grin on his lips.

"Are you sure?" Snow asked him. "Absolutely sure, because remember, if you're wrong, you're out of the game." Henry had been wrong once before and was a little upset to learn that being wrong led him to be kicked out of the game.

"I'm a hundred percent sure," Henry retorted, then cocked his head to the side. "Well, not a hundred percent sure. More like ninety-eight percent. But I'm still as sure as I'm going to get."

Emma tried very hard to hide her amusement at her son's waffling. "Go ahead, then. See if you're right."

Henry pulled the little envelope from the center of the board and opened it to peek at the cards it contained. His grin grew wider as he set the cards down on the board, face up. "I _was_ right!"

"Great job, kid," Emma grinned. She knew from the jump that he had it right because she'd figured it out, too. Henry just happened to take his turn before she could call it herself.

"You know," Snow said, giving her husband's arm a playful shove, "that's the second time you've been the killer. Is there something I should know?"

"Why are you picking on me?" David teasingly asked, raising his hands in surrender. "Emma was the killer once, too, you know."

"'Once' being the operative word there," Emma replied, exchanging a smile with her mother. "I was the killer _once_. You've been the killer _twice _now. That makes you a serial killer, which is infinitely creepier."

"Once, twice, what difference does it make?" He returned his daughter's teasing grin. "We're both going to jail for life."

"Maybe, but the nature of our crimes is different. I clocked him over the head with a candlestick in the dining room," Emma reminded him. She pointed at the illustrations on the board. "See how there are candles on the table? I obviously just grabbed whatever was handy. That's like, the definition of 'crime of passion.' You killed with a gun and a rope. That's premeditation. And you committed murder twice! It's a pattern of behavior now."

Unable to think of a proper defense against his daughter's playful accusations, David simply grinned at her. "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if not for Detective Henry cracking the case wide open."

Henry beamed as he collected the character, room, and weapon cards from his family. "Are we playing again, or are we Clue-d out?"

By way of a response, Snow said, "I'm kind of afraid of finding out that my husband committed more than two murders." They'd played six games, which was plenty. And, let's not forget, her husband and daughter – or at least their chosen characters – had committed fifty percent of those murders.

Henry nodded and gave the cards to his grandmother. As David and Snow began packing the various Clue pieces back up into the box, Emma pushed herself up on her knees and made a grab for the deck of cards. The cards were hers, though she didn't really know why she'd carried a deck of cards around with her from place to place. As a kid, she'd liked to play Solitaire but she hadn't made a habit of playing much as an adult.

All of a sudden, she remembered a prank one of the older boys in one of her foster homes had pulled on her when she was about Henry's age. She tugged the cards from the box and began to shuffle them. "Hey, kid, have you ever played Fifty-two Pickup?"

Henry frowned at her. "No, I don't think so. How do you play?"

She hesitated. Would Henry take her next action as the joke it was meant to be?

Wait a minute, this was the kid who'd wanted to put shaving cream in her hand when she was asleep. Of course he'd take it as a joke.

She hoped.

"First," she said, setting the entire deck in her right hand, face out, "one person shuffles the cards and holds them like so." With a grin, she squeezed the deck, sending the cards towards Henry, who cried out in surprise. "And now the other person has to pick them up."

Emma held her breath as she awaited her son's reaction.

It took a moment for the kid's shock to fade, but then he cracked up laughing. Emma released her breath in relief. "I'm totally going to do that to someone at school next time we have indoor recess," Henry said between giggles.

"You can do it with the understanding that you'll pick them up if your chosen victim doesn't," Snow reminded Henry, swallowing a laugh at her daughter's antics.

"Okay," he agreed as he began picking up the cards Emma had essentially thrown all over the living area.

"Fifty-two Pickup notwithstanding," David said, winking at his daughter, "what game are we playing next?"

"Since the cards are out already," Henry said in what Emma gauged as the understatement of the day, "I could teach you guys how to play Slapjack."

Emma raised her eyebrows at him. "Is that played how it sounds like it would be played?"

"Pretty much," he smiled. "We deal out the cards like War. Then we turn our cards over one by one. When you see a Jack, you slap your hand over it. The first person to slap the Jack takes all the cards underneath it. When you lose all your cards, you're out of the game, but you can get back in again by slapping a Jack and taking those cards. The object of the game is to end up with all the cards."

The adults all exchanged a glance. "Sounds easy enough," David shrugged.

"It works for me, too," Snow agreed.

"Yeah, sure, why not?" Emma said.

Henry grinned, obviously thrilled at the opportunity to teach his family a game. He finished collecting the cards from the floor and gave them a quick count to make sure he hadn't missed any. He did indeed have all fifty-two of them, so he handed them to Emma, who frowned at him. "What'd you give me these for?" she asked.

"I can't shuffle cards," he shrugged. "The only way I know how to do it is to spread them all out on the floor and mix them up with my hands."

Emma rolled her eyes and sighed but there was a little smile on her lips. "I'll teach you how to do this later," she said as she shuffled the cards for him. After mixing the cards a few times – and impressing the hell out of Henry when she formed a bridge after riffling – she handed the deck back to her son.

He dealt out the cards and told them he'd start, just to give them an idea of what to do. Play went around the circle four times before Snow flipped over the first Jack.

And that was when everyone discovered that both David and Emma had lightning reflexes. They both went to slap the Jack at the same time, causing them to smack each other's hands instead. In the ensuing chaos, Snow managed to snag the cards.

"Hey, wait!" Emma cried as she cradled her aching right hand in her left. "Either David or I should get that pile. We were first!"

"The rule is whoever touches the Jack first gets the cards," Henry gently reminded her. "You guys hit each other, not the Jack."

"Hmph." That was from Emma. It was quiet – barely audible, actually – but it was there. Henry bit his lower lip to keep from laughing out loud.

They continued on with the game, flipping cards one by one until Henry flipped over the second Jack. Again, Emma and David went after it at the same time. Father and daughter were locked in a lightning-fast battle for dominance, and father faltered. His stinging hand was a reminder of the last time he and Emma tried to slap the Jack at the same time, and he hesitated. His hesitation was barely longer than a blink of an eye, but it was just long enough for Emma to sneak her hand in under his.

They ended up with a pile of hands on top of the cards. Since Emma could feel the cards under her hand, she knew she'd won. "All right, everyone off," she said, wiggling her hand under David's. "I've got this one."

It took two more rounds for Henry to lose all his cards. Somehow, he didn't think it was fair that he was the only one who knew how to play this game ten minutes ago and he was now kicked out of it. He wasn't completely out of it yet, of course; he could always slap a Jack to get himself back in the game.

But as he watched his mother and grandparents continue the game, he decided that it was okay if he didn't make it back in. Watching as the adults smacked cards and laughed at the sheer silliness of it all was almost as fun as playing.

Henry tried to get himself back in, he really did, but David and Emma were way too quick on the draw. They ended up kicking Snow out of the game not long after Henry. As grandmother and grandson met each other's eyes, it was clear that they both knew neither of them would be getting back in any time soon.

With nothing left to do but watch, Snow leaned over to Henry and whispered, "I bet you a dollar that David's going to win."

"Nuh uh," Henry whispered back. "Emma's going to win."

They shook on it and watched the game intently, Snow silently rooting for her husband and Henry silently rooting for his mother.

It was a long, seesaw battle. Just when it looked like David was out, he would slap a Jack and end up with more cards. But in the end it was Emma who was victorious. "Yes!" Henry cried, raising his arms over his head in a V and startling both David and Emma. "Gramma owes me a dollar!"

"Whoa, wait a sec," Emma said, her triumphant grin fading as she turned her attention to her mother and son. "You guys bet on this game?"

"Yeah!" Henry exclaimed, proving that he clearly had no idea what the problem was. "And I won because you won!"

Emma turned a mock affronted look on her mother. "So, hold on. Not only are you teaching my son how to gamble, but you also bet against your own daughter?"

Snow cringed sheepishly. "Yes? On both counts."

"Why, thank you, darling," David said, winking at his wife.

"Um, yuck," Emma muttered in her father's direction. She shook her head as she shuffled the cards for a second game. "Between the lovey-dovey parent stuff and being thrown under the bus by my own mother, I think I'm traumatized for life now."


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:** I had a cruddy day, which means you guys get a new chapter because your lovely comments will help me feel better. :) Also, there are about 7 bajillion versions of Life, but the version the Charmings are playing is the one from the 80s, because a) it makes sense, timewise, and b) it's the one I had growing up. I don't remember if it allowed a player to end up with as many kids as I gave Emma, but if it didn't, let's just say I took creative license. ;)

* * *

"Who knew the Game of Life would be so complicated?" Snow wondered aloud as she began setting up the myriad pieces on the game board.

"Well, in case you hadn't noticed, life itself has a tendency to be a bit complicated," Emma retorted dryly. "Of course the game would be complicated. But at the same time, things are oversimplified, like all of us driving a minivan." She held up a little plastic car to prove her point. "I will never drive a minivan."

"A minivan is a lot roomier than your car, Emma," David teased.

"That may very well be but it's also a lot more boring. My car may be a lot of things but boring is not one of them."

Snow smiled at the hint of pride in her daughter's voice. Emma's car was most certainly not boring. A bright yellow vintage Beetle had a tendency to get itself noticed. "All right, I think we may finally be all set up here." She turned to Emma and Henry. "Do either of you know how to play?"

Henry shook his head while Emma stared down at the board, a frown knotting her brow. "Maybe. This looks a little different from what I remember, but it appears as if it's pretty self-explanatory. Spin the wheel, follow the path, do what the spaces tell you, and have the most money at the end."

"Can I be the banker?" Henry asked as he stuck a blue peg in what passed for the driver's seat of his blue plastic minivan.

"Sure, kid," Emma agreed. She took it upon herself to set up the "banking area" in the empty bottom of the game's box, cash and insurance policies and stock certificates and bank notes all lined up for easy access.

As she was doing so, a memory came flitting back: setting up a banking area like this but not for Life. For a different game. "This kind of reminds me of a game we had in one of my foster homes," she said to no one in particular. "It was called Masterpiece. There were cards with paintings on them and cards with monetary values, and they were matched up at random. You bought paintings at auctions or from other players but only the person who ended up with the painting knew how much it was really worth. The goal was to be the one to make the wisest investment choices and have the most in cash and art value at the end of the game."

Emma looked up from her task to find everyone looking at her, waiting for her to finish. Upon realizing she had inadvertently made herself the center of attention, she completely lost her train of thought. "It was kind of complicated, I guess, but we had fun with it." She shrugged. "I liked being the auctioneer."

Snow and David both gave her a gentle smile but after she returned her attention to the play money, they exchanged a loaded glance. Both of them would have given anything to have played Masterpiece with her instead of their poor daughter having to play with kids she lived with for a short time and never saw again.

"Oh, and by the way," Emma said, the tone of her voice indicating that she was simply trying to fill the somewhat awkward silence, "I object to the pink and blue pegs. Why can't these things look like people?"

And just like that, the air in the room turned playful again. "You're only objecting because you have to be a pink peg," Snow teased.

"All I'm saying is that they could look like people," Emma said as she stuck a pink peg in the driver's seat of her car. "We have the technology to manufacture itty bitty pieces of silverware for dollhouses but they can't injection-mold little plastic people for this game?"

"Little plastic people wouldn't fit quite so nicely into the little plastic minivans," David reminded her.

Emma smirked at her father. "I thought we'd already established that the little plastic minivans are just as stupid as the pink and blue pegs."

"Are we ever going to play?" Henry interrupted, pointing down at the board. His plastic minivan, along with Snow's, sat ready and patiently waiting for play to begin.

"Sorry," Emma said sheepishly as she set her car down next to Henry's. "Let's go."

As they started to play, the rules came back to Emma. She remembered that she'd always gone down the business route as a kid instead of going through college, mostly because she was impatient. This time, she decided to head the long way down the university route and ended up as a doctor for her troubles.

"All right, Emma!" Henry exclaimed.

"That's Dr. Swan to you," she said with a wink.

When Henry landed in the lawyer square, David said, "Ah, so it's Henry Mills, Esquire."

David landed in the doctor square after Emma moved out of it. Snow, much like her cursed alter ego, ended up as a teacher. She dropped her head when she came to a stop in the square, causing Emma to bite back a snicker. "We can pretend you're a college professor, if it makes you feel better," she said to her mother.

"No, that's okay," Snow sighed. "It says teacher. I'll be a teacher."

By the time she was a third of the way around the board, Emma and her pretend husband had so many children that she needed to use a second car. She'd had every intention of simply propping the additional pegs in between the ones already nestled in the car but Snow and David began to tease her about seatbelts and car safety. "Fine!" she'd cried just to shut them up. "Give me a second plastic minivan. Of all the indignities …"

When she removed the blue peg that represented her husband from her car and stuck it in the driver's position of the second, David frowned at her. "What are you doing?"

"You think I'm letting one of my six kids drive the new car?" she asked him. "Hell no. I drive one, and Fake Dad drives the other."

He snickered. Who knew that Emma would take all of this so seriously? "Good thing you ended up as a doctor," he smiled, meeting his wife's eyes over their daughter's head. "You're going to need a doctor's salary to support your brood."

"So, when am I getting my five brothers and sisters?" Henry asked, an innocent little smile on his lips.

Emma fixed him with a mildly annoyed glare. "On the twelfth of Never, in the year I Don't Think So."

"You know, Emma," Snow said, swallowing a laugh, "if you do end up with six kids, you really will need to give up your car for a minivan."

"I'm not going to have six kids!"

"You say that now."

"All right, whose turn is it?" Emma asked, master subject-changer that she was.

Henry bit back a grin. "It's yours."

Emma felt the heat rising in her cheeks, and she knew she was blushing. Damn. With a sigh, she spun the wheel and took her turn.

The square she landed on gave her a seventh baby. She groaned while the rest her family cracked up laughing. Sighing even heavier than before, she added a pink peg to her second minivan. "At least I'll end up with a small fortune my sixteen million kids at the end of the game."

Despite all the money Emma received for her mountain of children, Snow was eventually crowned the winner. "Who would've thought that out of a game with two doctors and a lawyer, the teacher would end up winning?" David asked, grinning at his wife.

"The teacher got lucky," she answered, smiling back. "One of those doctors had a pile of children to support and the lawyer had a gambling problem and was a much better lawyer than he was a stockbroker."

Henry smiled sheepishly. He'd lost a fair amount of money betting on the wheel and on the stock market's down days. "Are we playing again?" he asked as Emma began collecting all the various bits of plastic and piles of paper and set about reorganizing it all.

"I'm not," Emma insisted. "My luck, I'd end up with ten kids next game."

"Party pooper," Henry teased.

Emma stuck her tongue out at her son before pushing herself to her feet. "Don't let me stop you, though. It's fine with me if you guys want to play a second game. I can get dinner going in the meantime."

David and Snow exchanged a surprised glance. This was the first time Emma had offered to cook for the family. "You want to cook dinner?" Snow asked. "Emma, you don't cook."

"I can cook some things," she huffed. "I lived on my own for how long? You don't think I got by on takeout or frozen dinners every single night, do you?"

"Well, no, but–"

"So give up control of the kitchen and let me cook dinner while you guys play."

Again, Snow and David exchanged a glance, though this one had more silent communication than before. David shrugged, indicating he believed they should let Emma cook if she wanted. "All right," Snow said with an identical shrug. "Knock yourself out."

Emma smiled a thank you and headed to the kitchen while the rest of her family started on a second game. Snow, however, was distracted; she kept peeking over at the kitchen in an attempt to see what Emma was doing. "Leave her alone, Snow," David murmured.

"I just want to see what she's making," she whispered back.

"Ziti, salad, and rolls, if you must know," came Emma's amused voice from the kitchen. "I can still hear you over here, remember. And on the scale of difficulty of dinners, this is roughly a two, so like I said before, I know what I'm doing."

Snow sheepishly apologized to her daughter. "I'm just surprised, is all. You never offered to cook back when I was Mary Margaret."

"Yeah, well," Emma murmured, her voice suddenly quiet.

Truth be told, she had liked that Mary Margaret wanted to make her meals. She'd never had someone make her food just because they wanted to cook for her. It took a little bit of getting used to, of course, but she'd kind of come to look forward to it.

That, however, was not something she wanted to admit in front of everyone.

Sensing that she'd inadvertently stumbled into uncomfortable territory, Snow settled for giving Emma a calm smile and refocusing on the game.

By the time David was declared the winner of the second game, Emma had everything on the table. "Dinner is served," she said, smiling.

"It smells delicious, Emma," David said as he picked himself up from the floor.

"It's the rolls," Emma agreed. "Freshly baked rolls always smell so good."

"And the tomato sauce," Henry added.

"Okay, it's the rolls and the tomato sauce."

As the boys took their seats and began serving themselves, Snow stood and grabbed Emma's arm to get her attention. "Are you okay? I didn't mean anything by what I said earlier. About you not offering to make dinner before."

"I'm okay," Emma promised. She peeked over her shoulder. David and Henry were completely focused on the food, so she supposed she could tell Snow what had been on her mind earlier. "I never offered to make dinner before because … I liked that you wanted to cook for me. It made me feel special." When Snow's eyes widened in surprise at her daughter's admission, Emma winced. "I'm sorry. It's silly."

"It's not silly at all, Emma," Snow assured her. "I just never realized it made you feel that way."

Emma gave a somewhat uncomfortable shrug, but at least there was a small smile on her face. Snow smiled back and the two of them sat down at the table with the boys.

Before serving herself, Emma just sat and watched her family for a long moment. Henry had already piled two rolls on his plate and was asking for the butter. Snow was laughingly telling David to watch out for the drinks as he cleaned up a bit of salad dressing that had dribbled down the side of the bottle.

Try as she might, she couldn't stop the smile that spread across her lips.

"What's so funny?" David asked, startling her back to reality.

"Nothing," she said with a nonchalant shrug. "I'm just wondering if tomato sauce was the best idea. I mean, there's already Italian dressing all over the table, butter dripping off Henry's rolls, and you just came within inches of spilling a full glass of milk."

"Are trying to say we're messy?" David asked.

"I'm not_ trying_ to say it," Emma said as she reached for the pasta bowl. "I _am_ saying it."

"Yes, well, that's what makes us fun," Snow said with a wink. "Right?"

"Right," Emma agreed, her smile growing wider.


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note:** I'm so sorry for the chapter-not-showing-up glitch. If I'd known it was happening, I wouldn't have uploaded the new chapter until it was resolved. Thanks to those of you who reviewed asking for the chapter and PMed me to let me know it was missing. I hope all you New Englanders made it through the blizzard unscathed! I got a little over two feet of snow in my neck of the woods. When I started writing this story, we had temps in the 50s. Little did I know I'd be living my plotline at some point soon! As always, I hope you enjoy. :)

* * *

At some point while Emma was cooking dinner, the last snowflakes fell from the sky. Her phone rang just as they were finishing up dessert – ice cream, because Snow had a sense of humor. The call was from Leroy, who told Emma that he'd had a few hours' sleep and was about to get back on the road to clear the rest of the snow from Storybrooke's streets.

Emma thanked him, told him to be careful, and made a mental note to bring up the need of a real, actual snowplow at the next city council meeting. One man could not continue to be responsible for plowing out an entire town.

"The roads will be passable again by morning," Emma said as she pressed the end button on her phone. She turned to David. "We should go back out to shovel sometime soon. If it freezes overnight, trying to dig out tomorrow is going to suck."

Snow smirked at her daughter's oh so eloquent statement. "Go now. It's just going to get colder as the night wears on."

Emma looked from her mother to the sink full of dishes and back again. "If you're sure ..."

"I've got the dishes," Snow assured her. "You two go out and shovel before the temperature gets dangerous."

"Can I go outside and play while you guys shovel?" Henry asked in the same pleading, hopeful tone he'd used when he wanted to play Clue.

Again, Emma's eyes shot to the dishes. "I think you should stay here where it's nice and warm and help clean up."

"Emma, I said I could handle the dishes." Snow winked at Henry. "Besides, Henry needs to make a snowman for me."

"Uh huh, I do," Henry agreed with a sage nod. "I have to make Gramma a really big snowman with a carrot for a nose and buttons for eyes and maybe one of my old scarves and a hat and–"

"No hat," Emma interrupted, her tone surprisingly vehement for such a joking conversation.

Henry looked confused for a moment but then he got it. "You do know that 'Frosty the Snowman' is just a song, right?"

"Yeah, well, up until a few weeks ago, I thought Snow White and Prince Charming were just characters in a book," Emma reminded him. "I'm not taking any chances. The last thing we need is for some magically alive snowman to go thumpity-thump-thumping down Main Street."

Henry giggled. "So … that means I can go make a snowman while you and Gramps dig the cars out, right?"

She stood there for a long moment, mulling over her options. She really wanted to just shovel and get back inside. Having to keep half an eye on Henry as she shoveled would slow her down. On the other hand, aside from when he first got up, this was the first time he'd asked to go outside. She didn't want him outside alone – one could never be too careful with all the magic-users in town – but she and David would be with him if trouble arose.

All of her careful consideration went out the window when she spotted the tiny pout on Henry's lips and the sad-puppy-dog look in his eyes. Oh, that was completely unfair. "All right, fine, you can come outside with us."

"Yes! Thank you!" Henry turned and ran up the stairs to change into play-in-the-snow clothes.

Emma rolled her eyes at both Henry's enthusiasm and Snow telling her "three Eskimos" to have fun. "Oh, yeah, I'll have a total blast," Emma grumbled as she pulled on her coat and gloves. "Shoveling wet, heavy snow is the most fun someone could have."

Henry bounded down the stairs all bundled up and carrying an extra scarf and gloves and, of all things, a ruler. "What's with the ruler?" Emma asked.

"So we can see how much snow fell," Henry said. The "duh" was implied.

Emma sighed again. "Wish us luck," she murmured to Snow as the three of them headed out the door, Henry excitedly and Emma and David a bit less so.

The first thing Emma noticed when she stepped outside was that the snow that had fallen throughout the day was a lot lighter and fluffier than the stuff that had come down overnight. _Thank sweet merciful heaven_, she thought. If she had to dig out three freaking parking spaces, this was the kind of snow she would rather shovel.

"What's the total, Henry?" David called to the boy, who had darted out to the middle of the apartment building's grounds to find a level place to stick the ruler.

"Ten and a half inches!" he called back.

Emma groaned. That was a lot of freaking snow.

Still, she and David managed to dig all three of their vehicles out in about half the time as it took them that morning. The temperature had dropped a couple of degrees in the time they had been working and Emma was eager to get back into the warmth of the apartment.

As she turned to call Henry inside, a snowball hit her smack in the chest. She let out a combination gasp and screech as the snowball exploded against her jacket and shut her eyes when some of the packed snow hit her face. "I'm so sorry!" Henry cried as he ran up to her. "I was aiming for your back! I didn't know you were going to turn around."

Emma attempted to wipe her face, which turned out to be a lame idea considering her gloves were caked with snow. "It's all right," she said to her son as she bent down, making it look like she was simply picking up the shovel she'd dropped. In truth, she was reaching through the powder and down to the packed snow underneath.

She grabbed a handful of snow and whipped it at Henry, aiming for his coat. "Just as long as you can take what you're dishing out," she grinned.

Henry gasped in surprise and then started laughing. He quickly gathered more snow to take revenge for Emma's revenge. Before either of them knew it, they were fighting an all-out snowball war in the middle of the parking lot.

Neither of them noticed David take the shovels and slip back inside with a mischievous grin on his lips. As such, neither of them was prepared for the snowball assault from the entrance to the building.

Emma cried out in surprise and whirled around to find both David and Snow standing at the entrance with snowballs at the ready and grins on their faces. "Oh, it is _on_," she hollered to her parents.

The snowball war continued until everyone's hands ached from the cold. Every strand of Emma's hair not covered by her hat was dripping wet and Henry was shivering, so David called for a truce. "Until the next snowstorm, of course," he said with a wink.

"Who started the snowball fight, anyway?" Snow asked as the foursome tromped up the hallway stairs, leaving wet bootprints in their wake.

"Henry," Emma said as the same time as Henry insisted Emma did. "Hey, wait a sec, I'm completely innocent! I was just standing there, minding my own damn business when your snowball whacked me in the chest, remember?"

"Yeah, but you started the war when you got me back."

"Oh no, that's not how this works," Emma said, pausing on the stairs. "You launched first, kid. You declared war. I was just defending my territory from the enemy."

Henry looked to his grandmother for assistance. Unfortunately for him, Snow sided with her daughter. "She's right, Henry. We told her she started the paper war because she threw first, remember?"

Emma grinned at her, thrilled for the backup.

"Fine," Henry sighed. A split second later, he grinned proudly. "Then I guess I _am_ the one who started it!"

Before David had dragged Snow outside to engage in a family snowball fight, she'd once again cranked the heat in the apartment. Everyone stripped off their wet outerwear, and Emma carried it all to the dryer before grabbing a towel from the linen closet for her hair.

While Emma was drying her hair, Snow decided to make a batch of cocoa for the family. Emma spent a few minutes longer upstairs with the hair dryer than she really needed to, mostly because she could not bear to put the dryer – and its delightful heat – away. By the time she managed to tear herself away from the source of warmth, the entire apartment smelled of cinnamon and chocolate.

Everyone reclaimed their seats at the kitchen table while they sipped their cocoa and tried to get warm. "So what are we going to play now?" Henry asked.

"Dominoes is a good table game," Snow suggested.

"I don't know how to play dominoes," Emma reminded her.

"You match dots." That was from Henry, helpful as always.

"Pips," David corrected.

"Huh?"

"The dots are called pips."

"That's a funny word," Henry giggled.

Emma gave an indulgent sigh. "Okay, so we match pips. What else?"

"That's pretty much it." Snow, who had stood up to retrieve the set of dominoes from the other room while Henry was learning a new word, sat back down at the table. "You can only place a domino if you have a match, end to end. Doubles can be placed crosswise. If you can't make a move, you pass your turn. First to place all their dominoes wins."

It sounded easy enough, Emma supposed. "I'm still kind of lost, but I'm sure I'll figure it out."

Snow gave her a gentle smile as she turned the dominoes face-down on the table. They each picked their poison, and Henry ended up with the double-six. "I have absolutely no idea what that means," Emma said when he raised his arms over his head in victory, "though I'm guessing from your reaction that it means something good."

"It means I get to go first."

"Of course it does."

They sipped their cocoa and took turns placing dominoes. Emma got the hang of it rather quickly; Snow was right when she said that matching pips was pretty much it. Still, she ended up having to pass one too many turns, allowing Snow to lose all of her tiles first. "Aw, I only had one more!" Henry cried. "That's like losing when you only need one more number in bingo." His eyes lit up. "Ooh! Could we play bingo?"

Bingo? The kid wanted to play bingo? "What are you, seventy?" Emma asked. "Besides, we don't have a bingo set."

"Who needs a set?" Henry asked. "We've got everything we need right here! We could each make our own cards, I could write out some numbers to pull out of a shoebox or whatever, and we can raid Gramps' change jar for bingo chips."

Okay, he had a reasonable point. But still … bingo? Emma looked from her mother to her father and groaned inwardly. They were actually on board with this idea! "It's almost eight at night, Henry," she reminded him because she was most emphatically _not_ playing bingo. "It's a little late for arts and crafts."

"The cards don't have to be pretty, just functional," David reminded her. "It'll take five minutes."

"Oh, please, Mom?" Henry begged. "Please?"

She was about to say no, but then she saw the first hint of his lower lip jutting out. He was starting The Pout, which was the first step to Puppy Dog Eyes.

"Fine, I guess we're playing bingo," she sighed. Next on her How to Be a Mom For Real agenda should really be learning to build up some sort of resistance to Puppy Dog Eyes.


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note:** Let's hope this chapter goes up with minimal problems this time. Yeesh.

* * *

After Emma officially agreed to play bingo, Snow stood up from the table, went first to the kitchen cabinet to retrieve something, and then disappeared into her room. The three left at the table exchanged a bewildered glance, and David shrugged, indicating that he didn't have a single idea what his wife was doing.

She eventually emerged carrying a plastic tote. Her hair was slightly mussed, as if she'd been digging through a closet or under a bed. Before Emma could ask what on earth a plastic tote had to do with bingo, Snow set the bin on the table and removed the lid to reveal a plethora of art supplies.

Pads of construction paper, small stacks of oaktag, markers, crayons, colored pencils, scissors, glue sticks, plastic tubs of glitter, and stickers all took up residence in the tote. Emma raised her eyebrows at her mother, silently asking why on earth it appeared as if Snow White had ripped off a craft store and kept the spoils in her bedroom.

"It's all Mary Margaret's," Snow replied with a shrug. "Apparently, you don't teach elementary school for twenty-eight years without amassing a collection of art supplies."

Apparently not. Emma pulled a stack of sticker sheets from the box and began thumbing through them. They seemed to be mostly scrapbook supplies: little shiny hearts, sparkly ribbon curls, holographic foil cars, animals, and the obligatory "great job" stickers. When she came across an entire package of gold stars, she snickered and shook the package in her mother's direction. "Gold stars? Really?"

Snow grinned as she snatched the stickers from her daughter's hand. "If you make the best bingo card, I'll give you one."

"You promise?" Emma asked, swallowing a laugh.

"Teacher's pet," David muttered with mock annoyance.

Snow laughed and began handing out sheets of constructions paper to her family. Henry wrinkled his nose at the sheet of orange paper he'd received and swapped it out for a green one. Emma, who had no idea what the difference between the two sheets of paper was, watched in amusement as he immediately dug into the tote for markers and set to work. After a moment or two, he stuck his little tongue out the corner of his mouth, a sure sign that he was concentrating.

Emma grabbed a ruler and a pencil to measure out a grid for her bingo card. She was oblivious to the amused glance Snow and David exchanged over her head. For someone who had not wanted to partake in arts and crafts, she seemed to be taking the creation of her bingo card quite seriously.

Once her grid was measured, she needed to outline it and write in her numbers. She poked through the tote and found, to her complete surprise, a set of scented markers she remembered using in school when she was younger than Henry. Not the exact same set, obviously, but one just like it. With a little, nostalgic smile, she pulled the box out of the tote, withdrew the purple marker, and sniffed. It smelled like grape – well, lab-created grape scent – just as she remembered.

So she outlined her grid in purple and started to write the numbers in magenta, which smelled like raspberry. Now that she thought about it, this was actually kind of fun. Not that she would ever admit that to anyone.

"Why do I smell fruit?" Henry asked after a moment.

"Um, because of me," Emma said sheepishly, holding up the markers.

"Oh, awesome!" Henry exclaimed. "Can I see?"

Emma handed the box over and Henry immediately began pulling out markers so he could decorate his card with doodles.

"I don't have to explain the rules for bingo cards, do I?" Snow asked as she relieved Emma of the purple marker to outline her own grid. "We all know that numbers one through fifteen go under the B and sixteen through thirty go under the I and so on?"

"I think we've all played bingo before," Emma said with, oddly enough, the same exact tone as Henry had used when he told her why he was bringing the ruler outside.

"Just making sure," Snow smiled. "I didn't want to find out after a few games that someone hadn't won simply because they were waiting for I74 or something."

_A few games? _Emma thought with an internal groan. All right, perhaps the arts-and-crafts portion of the evening was turning out to be more fun than she expected but a few games of bingo? Bingo was long enough with an entire roomful of people. Playing with four would lengthen each game exponentially, and Emma really had no desire to spend the next couple of hours playing bingo. Because, again, she was not seventy.

Plus, now she had that stupid kids' song about the stupid dog stuck in her head and it refused to go away.

Just as she finished up her card, Snow placed a gold star in the top corner of the sheet of paper. "I promised," she whispered to her daughter.

"Aw, really and truly?" Emma laughed. "I made the best bingo card?"

"You did indeed."

"It's because it smells like a fruit bowl, isn't it?"

Snow laughed, which made Emma grin. Since everyone else was still working on their cards, Emma took it upon herself to start writing up the number squares. The one thing she neglected to take into consideration was how tedious writing out and cutting up seventy-five squares would be. Her eyes were crossing by the time Henry finished his card.

Before she could pawn the rest of the task off on her son, however, he got up from the table and ran into the downstairs bedroom. He pushed the curtain aside a moment later, David's change jar in his arms. After reclaiming his seat at the table, Henry dumped out the coins and started counting out enough for everyone.

"Hey, this penny looks funny," he said after a moment.

Eager for the distraction, Emma reached across the table. "Let me see it."

He dropped the coin into her waiting palm. Upon closer examination, Emma knew exactly what her son had found. "Well, it seems as if you just found your first wheat penny, kid."

"My first what?"

"It's just an old design for the penny," she said as she handed it back to him. "Really old. Look at the date on it."

He squinted at the coin and then raised his eyes to Emma. "1928? Whoa!"

"When I was about your age, I started a small collection," she told him, smiling gently. "Nothing really special, just stuff I got back in change or found in the street. Most of the pennies I had were from the '30s and the '40s, but the crowned jewel of my penny collection was the one from 1910."

"Do you still have it?" he asked. "I'd like to see them."

"I don't," she replied somewhat guiltily. "I ended up selling it when I was a teenager. None of the coins were worth very much because they weren't in the best condition, but I needed what little I could get."

Henry gave her a sad smile. After exchanging a glance with Snow, David said, "Henry, why don't you hang onto that for me?"

"Really?" the kid asked, his eyes lighting up.

"Absolutely."

"Thanks!" He set the penny aside so it wouldn't be swept up with the rest of the coins on the table.

Emma met David's eyes and mouthed, _Thank you._

_You're welcome_, David mouthed back before refocusing his attention on finishing his bingo card.

In the time it took Henry to count out twenty-five coins for everyone, Emma had finishing cutting out the numbers and Snow and David had put the finishing touches on their cards. Since Emma was sitting next to Snow, she couldn't help noticing that her card was decorated with the kind of detail only an elementary school teacher could muster, with some sparkly stickers and little butterflies doodled in the corners. "Seriously?" she asked, holding up her mother's card. "This looks like something one of the girls in Mary Margaret's class would make."

Snow's jaw dropped open in surprise and then she started snickering almost uncontrollably. "I had no idea I was even doing that. I was just playing with the markers."

Emma rolled her eyes as she handed the card back to her mother, but she was smiling.

Since the change jar was already out and empty, Emma made the executive decision to use that as the vessel for the numbers. She dumped the folded squares into it and handed it to her mother. As Snow shook the jar to shuffle the numbers, Emma glanced up at the clock. It was twenty past eight. Arts and crafts had taken a little bit longer than David thought. Maybe she could talk everyone into just one game of bingo.

But as the foursome got into the match, Emma realized that a single game of bingo would not be on the agenda. To her utter amazement, all three of her family members were having a complete blast. She could understand Henry liking bingo because, well, he was a kid, and kids liked bingo. Her parents, however, were not kids and thus could not claim that excuse.

"You know only small children and the elderly like bingo, right?" Emma said when David mentioned out loud that he only needed one more number to win.

"I'm sure somewhere there are young adults who like bingo," David replied, winking at Snow. Emma just shook her head, completely unconvinced.

Still, she put coins over numbers whenever Snow called one she had without complaint. It wasn't until she placed a dime over G53 that she realized she had covered all the numbers under the G. "Oh! Bingo!"

For some ridiculous reason, she found winning the game somewhat exciting. Her excitement – and bewilderment – grew when Snow grinned at her and placed a Hershey's Kiss on the corner of her card.

"Um, thanks?" Emma asked. She still unwrapped the chocolate, though, because who the hell looks a gift of chocolate in the mouth?

"It's the prize for winning a game of bingo," Snow smiled. "That's what I grabbed from the cabinet."

Emma smirked. Her mother had been an elementary school teacher for far too long.

"Hey, I want a piece of chocolate!" Henry cried.

"Well, then, Sir Henry, you should win a game," David teased.

"So … we're playing again, right?" Henry asked as he cleared the coins from his card. "I mean, you can't just tell me I can win chocolate and then not let me have a chance to win it."

"Yes, we're playing again," Snow said as she dropped the drawn numbers back into the jar. "Unless anyone has any objections, of course."

Emma wanted to object because she really did not want to play bingo for the rest of the night. The look on Henry's face stopped her, however. Far be it for her to stand between her kid and the opportunity to win chocolate.

Plus, the little girl that resided somewhere deep inside Emma was just as excited at the prospect of more chocolate as Henry was.

"Yeah, we can play again," she said with a put-upon sigh. After all, she had a bingo-hating reputation to uphold.

Snow looked over at Emma with a knowing smirk as she cleared off her card. Oh, great, her mother had her figured out, didn't she?

Of course she did. Damn.


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's Note, Part the First:** There really is a Fascination parlor at Nantasket Beach and it really is a lot of fun. It sounds bizarre, but trust me, it's a blast.  
**Author's Note, Part the Second:** I am completely and totally blown away by your response to this story. For a story I only planned to write a few chapters of, this thing certainly took on a life of its own, due in no small part to how much you all seemed to eat it up. Thank you so much for the follows and favorites and all your lovely reviews. (Seriously, the review count on this thing is _insane_, and I absolutely love you all for it.) I hope you enjoy the last part!

* * *

As it turned out, the prospect of winning chocolate only kept a person who did not care for bingo interested in the game for so long. It didn't help that Emma's first piece of chocolate had been her only piece of chocolate thus far. She had no idea where Snow was keeping the Kisses, so it wasn't like she could sneak one here or there, either.

Despite Emma's growing impatience, the rest of the family was still having fun. David had taken the jar of numbers from Snow and had started calling them out in funny voices. Henry thought his grandfather's antics were hysterical; Snow and Emma just exchanged sighs and shakes of the head.

After the second game, they moved on from five in a row and switched to playing patterns. Snow had suggested the patterns in an attempt to keep the game from getting dull, causing Emma to remind her that bingo was already dull. They had played a T, a square, and an X, and now they were playing four corners. Thank whatever higher power might exist, both Emma and Snow only needed one more corner.

"If a day ever comes that we can all get out of Storybrooke," Emma said when Henry excitedly covered his second corner, "I should take you guys down to play Fascination."

"What's Fascination?" Snow asked.

Emma paused as she considered her answer. She usually described the game as the bastard child of bingo and Skee-Ball, but that was hardly appropriate for the eleven-year-old at the table. "You sit at a game table and roll a ball down a ramp and try to get it into one of the twenty-five holes at the end. When the ball goes through a hole, it lights up a bulb on a backboard, and you essentially play bingo with the lights."

Henry raised his eyebrows. "That sounds like fun! Where did you play that?"

"There's a place at Nantasket Beach in Massachusetts." She didn't find it prudent to mention that she only reason she knew it existed at all was because she had followed one of her "clients" down to a bar along the boardwalk.

Henry grinned at her. "Maybe someday we can go down there and play." His eyes suddenly widened. "Oh, I just thought of something! Can we play coverall next game?"

Emma tried not to groan. Coverall took so freaking long. Before either of her parents had a chance to answer, she said, "We can play one game of coverall, but I think it'll be time for bed after that, Henry."

Henry wrinkled his nose at the mention of every eleven-year-old's least favorite time of day. He glanced up at the clock and discovered with surprise that it was almost ten. Well, there went protesting; he was already up past his bedtime. Dang it. "Okay," he agreed, though it was obvious he was disappointed.

The adults exchanged a smile over the boy's head, and David continued calling out B or O numbers in funny voices.

After David called O66, Snow finally yelled, "Bingo!"

"You have to give yourself a Hershey's Kiss, Gramma," Henry giggled.

Emma had forbidden Henry from eating any more of his winnings two games ago, saying that it was too close to bedtime for chocolate. She planned to put the one he had lying in wait and any others he won in his lunchbox tomorrow morning. Of course, that was provided he didn't sneak downstairs before her and eat them for breakfast.

Smiling at her grandson, Snow pulled her second Kiss of the night from the hidden stash and set it on the corner of her card. As everyone cleared their cards off, David returned all the numbers to the jar and handed it to Henry, who had asked to call the final game.

Coverall, to everyone's shock except Emma's, took over half an hour. By the tail end of it, both David and Emma only needed one more number to Snow's two and Henry's three. Father and daughter were locked in a good-natured race for the bingo crown. David wanted chocolate; Emma just wanted the game to be over.

Henry finally called I27, and Emma cried, "Bingo! Thank God."

David and Snow both chuckled as Snow gave Emma her Kiss for winning and then evenly distributed the rest of the pieces in the stash. "That's your cue to go get ready for bed, kid," Emma reminded Henry.

To her utter shock, Henry ran off without putting up a fight. Emma raised her eyebrows at Snow, who shrugged. "I think he's a lot more tired than he wants to admit he is," Snow told her. "He's up over an hour past bedtime."

Emma nodded. As she began collecting the bingo numbers from the table, she said, "You know something? I had a surprisingly good day today."

"'Surprisingly good?'" David asked teasingly. "We're the life of the party! You were expecting to have a terrible day hanging out with us?"

"Shut up, you know what I mean," Emma replied. "I'm just saying … I had fun."

"Me, too," Snow agreed, smiling gently at her daughter.

David couldn't resist. "Me, three."

Emma groaned. "Just because you're a father now doesn't mean you can start with the dad jokes, you know."

"I'm wounded!" he replied, gasping in mock offense. "The Dad Joke is an art form. Every dad aspires to perfect jokes that make every single member of his family groan. And then once we've achieved that milestone, we move up to the next level: Dad Jokes With Puns."

Snow snickered. Emma simply stuck her tongue out at her father as she dropped all the coins – minus the 1928 penny – back into the newly empty change jar. "Like I told Henry earlier, puns are not funny."

"On their own, no, puns aren't funny," he allowed. "But pairing a pun with a dad joke makes both the dad joke and the pun funny."

"Uh huh, sure. You keep telling yourself that." Deciding to head Henry off at the pass, Emma scooped up his Kisses and headed over to the kitchen cabinet where he kept his lunchbox. This way, he wouldn't be able to sneak them in the morning.

Well, unless he thought to look for the chocolate in the lunchbox, she supposed.

She returned the lunchbox to its rightful spot in the nick of time. Just as she closed the cabinet, Henry, clad in pajamas, darted down the stairs and headed for the bathroom to brush his teeth. Taking advantage of the quiet, Emma slipped upstairs to change into her own sleep attire.

The quiet only lasted a few minutes. "Emma?" Snow asked from the bottom of the stairs. "Is it okay to come up?"

"Yeah," she called back as she plopped down on her bed and began tugging a brush through her hair.

Snow climbed the stairs and, smiling gently, joined her daughter on the bed. "Did you really have a good time today or were you just saying that?"

"I wouldn't have said if I didn't mean it," Emma assured her. "Besides, you would have known if I wasn't having a good time. Believe me."

Snow smirked. "Oh, I don't doubt that. I thought your eyes were going to roll right out of your head if we had to play one more game of bingo."

"They probably would have," Emma laughed. "But even bingo was kind of fun."

"The chocolate was fun," Snow corrected.

"Okay, yeah, bingo is still awful, but chocolate makes it better."

They shared a quiet laugh. The moment of peace between mother and daughter was shattered moments later when Henry bounded up the stairs, followed closely by David. "Um, it's a little cramped up here for a party," Emma said when David took a seat next to Snow.

"Gramps said I should ask Gramma if she'll read me a story," Henry said as he unmade the little daybed that was doubling as his bed until they could find something else. "You know, since she's up here and all."

"You want a bedtime story?" Emma asked, eyebrows raised. "You're delaying going to sleep as much as you possibly can, aren't you?"

"I don't want today to be over," he admitted sheepishly.

"We'll do this again someday," Emma promised.

"Do you think we could maybe have a game night once a week or something?"

Emma looked to her parents, who were very much on board with that plan. "Sounds like a great idea, kid," she smiled.

Henry grinned back. "Yes! Thank you! Now I get a story, right, Gramma?"

"Right," Snow smiled. "Bring me the book and then make yourself comfortable."

Henry reached under the daybed for his storybook but Emma climbed off her bed and stopped him. "Uh uh, not yours."

Grandparents and grandson exchanged a bewildered glance as Emma dug through her bottom dresser drawer. She retrieved what she was looking for, returned to the bed, and handed the book to Snow. "We can read one of mine tonight," she said with a gentle smile.

Snow ran her hand over the cover of the book before turning a touched expression on her daughter. "_Madeline_?"

"'In an old house in Paris that was covered in vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines,'" Emma recited. "It was my favorite when I was little. This particular book is actually an anthology of the six original stories. It's a little young for you, kid, but if you don't mind ..."

"I don't mind at all," Henry smiled.

Clearly enjoying this glimpse into their daughter's childhood, Snow and David held the book open between them. Snow's expression faltered just a tad when she spotted something stamped on the inside cover. "'Property of Southern Maine Child and Family Services?' Emma, you didn't–"

"No, I didn't steal a children's book," Emma laughed. "It belonged to the group home I was in when I was six, and I just fell in love with it. I used to sleep with it under my pillow just so none of the other kids would take it from me. When my new foster parents came to pick me up, they told me I had to give the book back. I started crying, but the director of the place crouched down, dried my tears, and told me I was welcome to take it with me. She explained to my foster parents that her own little girl loved Eloise the way I loved Madeline, and she couldn't imagine the kind of tantrum her daughter would throw if someone tried to take Eloise away from her."

As she told the story, Emma's voice had grown softer, more emotional. "It meant a lot to you," David said, his voice just as soft. "The director letting you take the book, I mean."

"It really did. She probably went out the next day and bought a replacement but still. She didn't have to let me take it in the first place."

Snow gave her daughter a smile through watery eyes as she turned to the first page. Henry got himself settled under the covers while Emma propped a pillow upright against her headboard and sank back into it. As soon as her family was comfortable, Snow began to read.

With the practiced skill of an elementary school teacher, Snow peeked over the top of the book every so often as she read to check on her audience. Halfway through the story, Henry's eyes had closed. Smiling, she continued to read.

"'And that's all there is, there isn't anymore,'" Snow finished, once again peeking over the book. Henry was completely out. Just as Snow was about to close the book and return it to Emma, she noticed to her complete surprise that Emma's eyelids were fluttering as she struggled to keep them open. Sensing an opportunity she probably would never get again, Snow turned the page and continued reading. "'In an old house in Paris that was covered in vines–'"

"What're you doing?" David whispered.

"Shh," she hissed, nodding her head in Emma's direction.

A quarter of the way through _Madeline's Rescue_, Emma finally gave in and let her eyes close. She was snoring lightly by the time Snow reached the end. Smiling, Snow closed the book and set it down on her lap.

"You do know how embarrassed she's going to be in the morning when she figures out she fell asleep to a bedtime story, don't you?" David whispered in amusement.

"Of course I do but that's tomorrow." Basking in the glow of reading her daughter a bedtime story for the first time, Snow grinned as she handed the book to David. "And you, my dear Charming, are not allowed to tease her about it."

"Me?" he asked with mock innocence. "I can't believe you think I would ever tease her about something like this."

"Oh, please. You were already thinking of jokes to use on her."

David shrugged, smiling. "Perhaps, perhaps not."

Shaking her head at her husband, Snow pushed herself off the bed and started to get Emma properly tucked in. Emma had turned down the bed before making herself comfortable, so all Snow had to do was very carefully tug the covers out from under her daughter's knees and bring them up over her legs. Now came the hard part: trying to get Emma to lie down without waking her. Leaving her slumped against the headboard would only result in a headache for Emma – or at the very least, a crick in her neck.

Snow held her breath as grabbed the bottom of Emma's pillow. She gave the pillow a gentle tug downward and, just as she'd hoped, Emma followed the motion in her sleep, repositioning herself on her side. Snow managed to get the pillow flat under her head just in time for Emma to tuck her hands underneath it.

Smiling in relief, Snow drew the covers around her daughter's shoulders. "Good night, princess," she whispered, bending down to press the barest whisper of a kiss to Emma's head.

While she had been getting Emma settled, David had done the same for Henry. They swapped spots to say proper goodnights to the family member they hadn't tucked in. Snow reached out to run her thumb down Henry's cheek and wished her little prince a good night.

When they met back up at the foot of Emma's bed, David held his hand out to her. She complied, slipping her hand into his and squeezing. He tugged her closer, releasing her hand to sling an arm around her shoulders. "So, both the kids are asleep," he murmured into her ear. "I don't know about you, but I'm not tired yet."

A little blush crept up her cheeks. "Why, Charming, are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting?"

A mischievous grin was his only answer.

She grinned back, her eyes sparkling. "Then lead the way." He once again took her hand and started leading her towards the stairs.

At the top of the metal staircase, Snow paused and turned back to check on her sleeping family one final time. Tomorrow it would be back to work and school for everyone but today … today had been something special.

She faced forward with a calm smile and reached out to flick off the light. As she and David descended the stairs, she couldn't help admitting that she was already looking forward to the next snowstorm.


End file.
